Chinnor thwart potential champions

OLD Albanian, who have been top of the table for most of the season, suffered at the hands of lowly Chinnor who produced their best tactical performance of the season on Saturday.

Chinnor, playing with a gale force wind in their favour for the first half, gave Old Albanian little choice but to run the ball out of defence as kicking into the strong wind was not an option.
Consequently most of the initial play was in the Albanian half with lock, Daz Oliver leading the charge followed by occasional counter attacks into Chinnor territory. The Chinnor defence rallied to prevent any score and fly half Angell’s kicking relieved any pressure and pinned Albanian back into their own half.

After 30 minutes, Chinnor opened the score when wing, Oscar Heath intercepted an Albanian pass to run 30 metres unopposed to score a try which was converted by Angell. Chinnor desperately tried to get another score before half time while they had the wind advantage but the Albanian defence stood firm.

In the second half, Chinnor now had the task of driving against the elements and they certainly rose to the occasion with scrum after scrum being pushed forward by their pack to release the back row of Manning and Messum to lead driving mauls while Waddingham tackled anything that moved. It didn’t take long for Heath to intercept yet another Albanian pass on the half way line then hand off the Albanian fly half to complete a 50 metre sprint to the line to score an unconverted try.

Then scrum half Greg Goodfellow stepped up to take centre stage. The frustrated Albanian pack began giving away penalties, one of which Greg took quickly from his own 22 metre area and ended up jinking into the Albanian half allowing lock Vandermolen to join in the driving run. Goodfellow then took a second quick penalty on the half way and sprinted through the Albanian defence only to be brought down short of the line. A quick flick to supporting Sam Angell put him over in the corner for an unconverted try and a surprising 0-17 point lead with 20 minutes remaining.

Old Albanian maintained their pressure but excellent defence by centres Beer and Fatialofa prevented any penetration of the three quarter line and attacking runs by ‘Fats’ often crossed the gain line and put Albanian on the back foot. With five minutes to go, Albanian kicked a penalty deep into Chinnor’s half and from the resulting line out the ball was fed quickly along the line for full back Foster to join in and score an unconverted try.

An exhausted and exhilarated Chinnor stuck consistently to their game plan to earn this well-deserved 17-5 victory.

SOURCE: Contributed by Doug Humphries